The D1 Effect- Chapter 9
by HaVIC
Summary: More adventures in the swamps, Condor soon starts to discover what it truley means to be a swamp-warrior at the swamps of Joiren. As always, please R&R! Thanks alot. :-)


The D1 Effect Chapter 9  
  
As told by Captain John Leeroy  
  
We charged relentlessly into the radioactive swamps with our head held high, our air-tanks pumped and our assualt rifles cocked. Since I was the leader of the rabble of partisans, I ordered for all of us to stay together underneath the swamps, keeping within a decent range of radio contact. And, if we were at all lucky, have a visual.  
  
Even though the slush and guck was nearly up to my neck, the stable, yet crude, radiation suits held up pefectly. In fact, a type of anti-friction liquid that could repel the swamp's guck was added to the suit, so we could charge through the swamps with little holding us back.  
  
"On my mark, dive," I said, with my head barely above the endless goo.  
  
"Roger," Incinerator replied.  
  
"Now!" I yelled, and dove underneath the surface of the swamp, and withno visability whatsoever, we headed into the darkness. Fourtunatly, the readings on my suit were keeping a light source there for me, and several systems buzzed, keeping me from going completly insane from the endless black and silence. Even though we couldn't possibly see each other, the suit's crude radar systems provided us with the up-to-date information needed to keep our band from separating and to see possible enemies approaching.  
  
It continued in a similar, dark and gloomy fashion for several hours before abything of note took place, and by then, we were half way until the second stage of the D1 Effect took place. I swear, if the IRA factions never started firing at us, then I would have suffered from mental ailment 4529.3, or what would be called "going off the deep end."  
  
To crave my sadistic needs, after 5 hours alone in the swamps, a loud alarm started blaring on my suit. Frantically checking all my insterments to see where the attack was coming from, I saw that nothing appeared on the screen except the "Warning, incoming howitzer shell, warning!" But no base within 5 miles to fire from. A howitzer couldn't fire that long, could it?  
  
But it wasn't the time for that, I dove further underneath the boggy water into the slightly darker and gloomier atmosphere which I just loved to be in. The alarm grew louder, even though I was desparatly attempting to get the heck out of there.   
  
"Guys, you got something on screen?" I asked frantically.  
  
"Wow, ya', and it don't look good," Marco agreed.  
  
"Just get out of here! Move!" I yelled, trying to propen my bogged-down body through the endless swamps of Joiren. No where to go, no where to hide! It's nightmare scenario numero uno, not even the knowledge of where it's coming from! Blind! Terror!  
  
Even though I had the weak aqua jets, I didn't bother using them because of the zenith capacity reached on the screen. A mechanized voice sounded loudly. "Impact iminent! Impact iminent!" The fateful words flashed in the LCD colors along the screen of my helmet.   
  
** NO! I will refuse to die! There is no chance that those bastars will win, not a chance! I will even take off my suit in these swamps to ensure the death of the evil! Hey, that gives me an- Yes! You will pay for this, yeerks!!! **  
  
"Incinerator, you got a gieger counter on your suit?"  
  
"Roger that."  
  
"What are the readings?"  
  
"Off the charts."  
  
"And what would be the maximum amount of time we would have to live if we were to take off our suits?"  
  
"Are you insane?! Oh, I get where you are going, very clever. About 5 minutes, before Lukemia."  
  
"Huh, oh! Ya!" Pete brilliantly exclaimed.   
  
"What are you guys taking about?" Jake demanded.  
  
Well, I sort of knew, not really. Plutonium oxide contains an anti-radiation substance called Plunonium 571.2a that disallows morphing and radiation degredading. In other words, you can't get out of it. However, with enough radiation, more than we could possibly muster, we could gain our morphing abilities back. And Incinerator and my morphs were perfectly adapt to the swamp, even if it was radioactive.  
  
Pete started to explain to him, as the bomb never wanted to drop on us. A few times a large impact shook us around a bit, but little actually happened. During our assault on the base, the systems must have been screwed up somehow, perhaps by physcostress, and became a tad too sensitive. Nothing we could do about the loud blares, yet anyway.  
  
"Guys, I'm not exactly down with the morphing here, it would cause suspicion and we could kill many people. I mean, these are innocents, right? Not yeerks," Marco said.  
  
"How could you tell?" Pete asked, as I got an uncanny feeling that he was smirking.  
  
"Well, I don't think we could have been fighting for another 20 years unnoticed. I mean, when we went to your time, we only had about 2 years experience. That might be too much, but 22 years? No way."  
  
"That doesn't mean there are no yeerks," I said bluntly.  
  
"True, but it increases the chance of the inexistence of their species on here, in these nuked swamps. Much less the world," Jake pitched in.  
  
"Umm, guys, just cutting in here, but about 400 yards to the North North West, there is a squadron of IRA faction members. 10 of them, armed with modified assault rifles and what looks like fragmentation grenades," Incinerator reported.  
  
"How are the rifles modified?"  
  
"Just a bit more power. If one hits you, you are gaurenteed to be dead. Unless you morph, which we don't really want to do. We can't outrun 'em, because they have far more training and maybe even experience in the swamps. Our only hope is the element of surprise, they havn't spotted us yet, and don't look like they ever will."  
  
"Could you tap into their conversation?" I asked, after a moment to process the information I had just gotten.  
  
"Might take a minute, no, wait, here it is! This suit was obviously modified in several ways. A tapper. Perfect. Transmission coming online...now," He said.  
  
"Aye, but they weren't the damned fool Yanks, now where they?" A voice with a heavy accent spoke. A loud crackle temporarily deafened me, before we could hear what next.  
  
"...must have...in the damned...Los Alam...complex. Fool catholic brits...Atomic bomb...in." Came the muffled voice of one of the squad's men, who seemed to really dislike the Brittish and the Americans, for reasons I probably will never know. I knew once that the Irish and Brittish had a conflict, but I was rusty in that part of history, so I didn't know anything.  
  
"Stop tapping," I ordered Incinerator. It was clear to me that they weren't looking for any threats, and were probably just milling around, keeping sentry.  
  
"What? I wasn't tapping?!" I heard a voice say. Uh-oh. Wrong transmission.  
  
"I never said you were, you oaf!"   
  
"Well, ahhh! 5 figures are now on radar! They've been tapping us! Bloody..."   
  
And that's when I started seening what exactly was in the murkey, radioactive water. 4 laser lights came blazing at us underneath the water and nearly burned-off my right arm. The lasers' heat started to boil the very water in which I was near, and started to eat away at my radiation-proof suit.  
  
"Agh!" I yelled.  
  
"You hit?!" Jake asked in panic.  
  
"No, but really f*cking close. There is no way that they could see that well underneath the water with that precision."  
  
"Well, they did. And that's a problem," Pete remarked.  
  
"Chainguns?"   
  
"They only work if you are above surface when firing underwater. I'm assuming that you don't want instant plastic surgery?" Incinerator pointed out.  
  
"Well then, people, go to the surface. Echolocal down and find exactly where they are before firing. Move!" I barked.  
  
Even if that friction-free liquid had been applied to the outside of the silvery suit, it was almost impossible to go upwards with the water boiling all around me. Maybe that was the reason why I couldn't get up; the lasers boiled the liquid. I sure hoped that was not the reason.  
  
Fourtunatly, only a bit of the friction-less mass had been vaporied, and I made it stealthily to the top. Swamp grass covered my helmet, making it look like I was a zombie from the depths to anyone who saw. However, the infared location and crude radar helped me see through it down to 10 struggleing suits firing carelessly upwards, missing us at distances of nearly 15 feet. And the bog continued to boil around my helpless body.  
  
But it wasn't so helpless for long. Bringing out my half-charged chaingun, as did the rest of the crew, we aimed below at the squirming bodies. I pulled the trigger.  
  
SSzzzzzIIIssZZZiSSS! The usunsual sound of Q9x water interaction was heard instantly and a stream of laser needles churned out from the chainguns we wielded. Several of the bodies were struck, instantly disentergrating their suit. I wish I could have saved his life, but I couldn't possibly do it in the 10 minutes he had left to live. In order to give him a painless death, I churned out yet another wave of laser needles, forcing the life out of his body.  
  
SSzzzzzIIIssZZZiSSS! SSzzzzzIIIssZZZiSSS! More fire came from me and my comrades' chainguns, even if they were rather outdated in Marco and Jake's cases. It was a game of cat an mouse, and we were the cat, playing with it's pray. Purposly missing on several occasions, I squealed with glee whenever someone died.  
  
** NNNNOOOOOOOOOO! These are normal humans, just like yourself! They are not evil, even if they do evil! They have hearts, they feel love, they care! **  
  
Letting my gut instincts guide me, I fired rapidly and precisley to give them the wanted painless death. Unfourtunatly, it wasn't that easy because of their armor plated suits, but eventually, we mangaed to extermish the remanents of the sentry force.   
  
I switched off my radio and said the usual after-kill prayer, "I have fought and killed for the glory of my people and I shall only do so forever more."   
  
Turning on my radio again, I was immidiatly aware of a force a lot great then the sentry soldiers that lay above ground. None of my sensors, except an infared, showed it, and I naturally slinked beneath the surface of the swamp to evade whatever it was.  
  
"Anybody getting a load of this?" Marco asked.  
  
"Yes, and they seem reptilian in nature. It has a DNA structural capacity similar to that of-"  
  
"Don't go Ax on me, what are they?"  
  
"Hork-bajir."  
  
Now THAT stunned me. An army of Hork-Bajir could never survive alone in these swamps, and I think that some of the factions would have noticed giant, 7 foot lizards coming into the swamps. But they were there, in the flesh. Wait a second, they could have been broughten here with another existence of the D1 Effect. Very possible.   
  
"Visser 7 told us to hunt down the bandits and kill them. We shouldn't kill any of the humans," One of them said. Even though I couldn't hear any of them for real, I sent out a radio probe mic to pick up the sounds.  
  
"I understand, sub-visser," another said, impatient.   
  
"Now, to find those bandits. These swamps can't be that big. Search everywhere. Form parties of 5 or more. Go!" The sub-visser barked, or I was assuming that it was a sub-visser.   
  
With that, I started to hear the very existent sounds of earth and mud beneath feet as the Hork-Bajir army started to advance across the swamp. ** Perfect timing, I hope you guys share that ESP thing like Pete does. On the count of 3, one... **  
  
Instantly, I felt a telepathic bond between all of us initiate, making my head throb. This was madness, only astrologers and other odd fanatics formed telpathic bonds! I saw the others thoughts instantly, but not in the sense of a yeerk. I saw what they wanted me to see, and I let them see my thoughts as well.  
  
** Condor, it's your move, ** Incinerator "said". It was madness, telepathic bond? Impossible, under the circumstances.  
  
** On my mark, 1, 2, 3! **  
  
Like the ultimate army from hell, we rose up from the swamp and started relentlessly firing at the Hork-Bajir that were spreading out along the swamp.   
  
Tsewsewsewsewsewsewsewsewsew! Thousands of laser needles jolted out of my chaingun, before I dived beneath the surface, kicked in my water jets and propeled myself as quickly as I could before I shot yet again, rising slowly from out of the bog.   
  
If I was the hork-bajir army, I would have passed out from sheer terror. We were every where and anywhere. If they fired at us, we would have been half way to our next striking place. The ultimate in guerilla warfare.  
  
Tsewsewsewsewsewsewsewsewsew! Tsewsewsewsewsewsew! More laser bolts soard out of chainguns from every single position in the swamp. The swamp grass made us look like killer zombies, and the built for H20 helmet added nicely to the deadly seen.   
  
But it didn't prepare us for the knowledge that we soon aquired.  
  
Hork-bajir can swim in swamps.   
  
VERY, very well. 


End file.
